Monopoly on God
The Times reports that Muslims in Malaysia are demanding a monopoly the word God by banning Christians (as well as others presumably) from referring to 'Allah' in their spoken and written language.
Now how sectarian and ridiculous is that - a government dictating to people what words they can and cannot use in their everyday lives, it's the craziest thing I've heard in a long time.
Christians in Malaysia banned from using the word ‘Allah’
Muslim activists wait for the verdict outside Malaysia's highest court in PutrajayaManan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images
By Richard Lloyd Parry - The Times
Christians in Malaysia have been banned from using the word “Allah”, in the culmination of a five-year legal battle that has provoked violence and religious tension in one of southeast Asia’s most ethnically diverse countries.
Today the Federal Court in Putrajaya rejected an appeal by the Roman Catholic Church, and upheld a government ban on the use of the word Allah by anyone other than Muslims. The word is used by some of Malaysia’s Christian minority as the Malaysian language equivalent of the English word “God”.
The word Allah, which originates in Arabic, has been used for centuries by Christians in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Indonesia, as well as in Malaysia. But the government argues that it should be reserved for the Islamic God, to avoid “confusing” Malaysian Muslims, who make up 60 per cent of the population. For many non-Muslims, it represents the latest manifestation of a growing Islamisation of a country that was formerly regarded as a model of harmonious and peaceful relations between different faiths and ethnicities.
“We are disappointed. The four judges who denied us the right to appeal did not touch on fundamental basic rights of minorities,” said Rev Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Catholic weekly newspaper, The Herald.
“It will confine the freedom of worship,” he said. “We are a minority in this country, and when our rights are curtailed, people feel it.”
The controversy began in 2007 when the Malaysian government threatened to revoke the publishing licence of the Malaysian language edition of The Herald, for using the word Allah.
In 2009, the case began making its way through the courts and after a victory by the Herald, later reversed on appeal, there were arson attacks on Christian churches. In January this year, the authorities seized hundreds of Malaysian bibles because of their use of the disputed word.
Many Malaysian Christians worship in English, Tamil or various dialects of Chinese. But Malaysian-speaking people in Sarawak and Sabah in Borneo have no other word for God, except “Allah”. Despite today’s ruling, some Christian leaders insisted that they would not abandon the use of the the word.
“We maintain that the Christian community continues to have the right to use the word ‘Allah’ in our Bibles, church services and Christian gatherings,” said Rev Eu Hong Seng, the chairman of the Christian Federation of Malaysia.
